The present invention relates to food products, and more particularly, to presweetened ready-to-eat comestibles such as breakfast cereals and to processes for the preparation thereof.
Presweetened breakfast cereals have been available for many years. Such cereals have been prepared by first producing unsweetened cereal pieces, particularly puffed cereal pieces, coating the cereal pieces with a slurry or solution of sweeteners and then drying the coated pieces in an oven or air current.
Generally, the primary sweetener for presweetened cereals has been nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners such as sucrose, fructose, corn syrups, etc. Sucrose solutions employed frequently contain various levels of regular [e.g., 42 Dextrose Equivalent (D.E.)] corn syrup to provide upon drying coatings which are either desirably clear or frosted.
While the foregoing carbohydrate sweeteners are effective to sweeten cereals, attempts have recently been made to reduce the sucrose and/or total sugars content of presweetened cereals. To provide traditional levels of sweetness at reduced concentrations, sweeteners having more sweetening power per unit weight than sucrose (i.e., having higher relative sweetness) must be employed.
Since fructose is 10%-70% sweeter than sucrose, art attempts have been made to employ fructose as a sweetening agent for ready-to-eat cereals. Fructose is commercially available in basically two forms, (1) high fructose corn syrup, (hereinafter "HFCS") normally a liquid, (20% moisture) and (2) crystalline fructose which is a solid powder.
High fructose corn syrup has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive compared to crystalline fructose. Employment of HFCS as the principal component of coating for presweetened cereals, however, suffers from several disadvantages. First, coating cereals with HFCS result in a sticky, messy product which at best is extremely difficult to dehydrate to a solid, non-adhesive state.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,089,984 issued May 16, 1978 to Gilbertson utilizes a process for coating cereal by applying a coating of hot liquid sweetener such as fructose, maltose, dextroses and mixtures thereof to cereal pieces and then applying a powdered edible material such as sucrose, lactose, corn syrup solids, corn starch, wheat starch, dextrose, protein or wheat germ. This process is an attempt to eliminate the stickiness problem.
Another problem with HFCS is that it is not as sweet as crystalline fructose. Fructose exists mostly in four forms as the alpha-furano, beta-furano, alpha-pyrano and beta-pyrano structures. The sweetness perception of fructose is, however, primarily a function of the amount of the beta-pyrano form. Crystalline fructose, is usually manufactured as theoretically pure anhydrous beta-D-fructopyranose for this reason (although typical analyses indicate only 97.2% beta-pyranose). HFCS, on the other hand, is not as sweet as pure crystalline fructose since it is an amorphous mixture of these less sweet fructose forms as well as the sweeter form and it contains glucose which is also less sweet. HFCS comprises only about 57-70% of the sweet beta-pyrano form (based on total fructose). Therefore, crystalline fructose is substantially sweeter on a unit weight basis than HFCS (dry basis).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,171 issued Apr. 5, 1983 to Furda discloses a method combining crystalline fructose of a particular particle size and HFCS seeded with powdered crystalline fructose, in a certain weight range ratio, with the result that the less sweet forms of HFCS can be converted in situ into the more sweet form. This method involves the steps, in sequence, of (a) providing a base of dried food pieces; (b) coating with a HFCS seeded with powdered crystalline fructose; (c) coating with a dry, solid, powdered crystalline fructose; (d) enrobing with a heated edible oil; and (e) dusting with a dry powdered sugar to form the finished sugar coated food products.
Art attempts to provide cereals coated with the high intensity sweetener aspartame include U.S. Pat. No. 3,955,000 issued May 4, 1976 to Baggerly. Aspartame was admixed in aqueous suspension with relatively high concentrations of water soluble dextrins. Atomization is used to evenly apply the suspension to the cereal base. A similar technique is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,151 issued Mar. 14, 1978. There, however, maltodextrin was substituted for the hydrolyzed dextrins in the aqueous dispersion so as to provide a coating which upon drying provides a frosted appearance as opposed to the glassy appearance taught as resulting from the methods of the '000 patent. The '151 patent also teaches the necessity of spraying the suspension with successive applications in order to produce a frosted appearance.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,377 issued Mar. 29, 1983 to Gajewski describes using a water soluble vegetable protein isolate as a adhesive to attach aspartame to the cereal pieces. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,587 issued Sept. 10, 1985 and issued to Gajewski describes using water soluble gums to help adhere the aspartame to the cereal pieces.
It is an object of this invention to provide a presweetened ready-to-eat comestible, preferably cereal, that is sweetened with nutritive sweeteners such as fructose, dextrose and sucrose and mixtures thereof. It has been found that certain cold-water-swelling granular starches are surprisingly useful in coating sweeteners on comestibles.
Throughout the specification and claims, percentages and ratios are by weight, and temperatures are in degrees Celsius, unless otherwise noted.